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How to fight burrowed underlings
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gemo

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gemo

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Help! I have a small army of them burrowed in my base!! TFM says I can damage them with heavy units. So should I roll heavy units over them or park them on top?
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lantry

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lantry

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moving heavy units onto them only does one damage; not nearly enough to kill them. I don't know the exact circumstances but I would suggest just avoiding them as much as possible, without letting them get a base or knock out artillery. If your opponent is spending so much on spamming underlings, you should be able to get the upper hand in the real fight aboveground. Spamming underlings isn't (IMO) a good strategy, the best way to use them is to send just a few to screw with your opponents heads XD
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waxoid

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waxoid

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Are you playing Titans and defending walkers? That's the most common scenario for buried underlings to be used. And the answer to the "what to do about them" question is fairly involved. (On many maps, the ultimate answer is "lose" Khral generally beat Titans pretty easily except *maybe* on very open maps... but only if the Khral player executes the standard attack right.)

The very first thing is to learn to read ant sign. This is a differentiating uniwar skill that the more inexperienced often haven't picked up, sadly. You get the little yellow numbers showing how many buried ants are *bordering* a given unit. It doesn't count an ant directly below the unit. The ant sign doesn't lie, but creates a 'minesweeper' microgame so you might need to think a bit to figure out where the ants are (sometimes there are two possible configurations – knowing ant sign means you can also place your underlings to create this confusing ant sign for your opponent). Then decide which ants to cover (e.g. those near walkers and assimilators) and how - the heavier the better, both because of the (very minor) damage they do and heavier units are harder for swarmers and wyrms to clear (i.e. to open a hole there for the ant to pop out). They're dangerous but console yourself with the knowledge that any you keep trapped underground are unable to participate in the battle.

Avoid putting assimilators on top of ants on plains – they can be one-hit by neighboring ants popping up, creating a chain attack. Put assimilators on forest/mountains if possible (no one-hit) and position them in range of assimilating *every* ant that pops up. Then you can bury those assimilated ants yourself and use them to ascertain for sure where other ants are (try moving to different spaces and cancel... if there is an ant there you'll get a message), and also create underground blockades to keep enemy ants out of an area.

Move your whole walker fort around laterally & unpredictably if you can. Don't let the khral player set up their perfect domino attack. The khral player controls engagement (on most maps), i.e. Titans have to be patient and try to 'attack' by stepping their walkers and surrounding fort forward 1 step at a time (preferably by 'half steps' where possible, depending on where opponents are relative to the hex pattern), threatening to press the opponent back until they have no choice but to attack or sustain extended walker fire.

Gets to be a larger Titans vs. Khral conversation...
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waxoid

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waxoid

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Oh, and to answer the question , moving ground heavy units onto buried underlings causes 1 point of damage at the point of moving. After that there is no further damage. So, e.g., if you have a bunch of speeders in your army you can move them about stomping on ants (preferably while whistling "La Cucaracha"). Which doesn't do much because ants can heal 1 point, but at least it forces them to do that. (And at 9 strength, at least they can't 1-hit a 10 point assimilator.) Given this effect is so weak, you'll see people continually suggesting ways to make it stronger to help Titans against Khrals. Most recently, ant pop-up bonus was decreased from +6 to +5 for this reason. And it surely helps, though based on limited experience it doesn't seem like enough. But I haven't played enough Titans vs. Khral on the new system... the randomizer keeps assigning me the Khral side in that pairing (which certainly still feels easy to win, but...)
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Rainbow

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Rainbow

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Now pop-up ling bonus is +3, thats why they cant kill assimilator in forest in one hit.
imo, titans can't do real damage to burried lings. Only sapience with their marauders can kill buried bug. Bunch of marauders can do good damage to buried lings or even kill it in several rounds!
If you aware where exactly placed ling, you should stand on it and retreat back with all your marauders one after another (during one round).
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waxoid

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waxoid

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I don't think it can be +3 or they wouldn't 1-hit on plains, which they still do. However, now you mention maybe it's +4 now, because I think even forest-to-forest (ling on forest, assimilator on forest) does not 1-hit anymore, which +5 should allow (13 to 3).
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TheOwner

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TheOwner

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If you want to kill them, you can use speeders to do quite a bit of damage by rotating them through. While that is an interesting strategy, its not useful. I recommend a bit of weak unit spams, some heavy units, and if your Titans get in a few Assimilators.
If your smart, you can learn to play Minesweeper and know their exact location.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jun 07, 2011 17:51


I was gonna say 'You been owned' but that makes me sound cocky... so um... ya...
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nfong

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nfong

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Like waxoid said, avoid putting your assimilators on a plain tile, always try to put them on mountains/forest. And if your opponent is literally spamming ants throughout the whole game, you would want a lot of mechas to cover.
I have also found plasma tank rushing against krahl players on close maps to be quite effective, especially if they continue to make lings and forget to make a few pinzys.

However, if you do decide to rush, remember to always warp in mechas to where you think a ling is buried. Especially keep an eye out for buried lings on mountains or forests, as they can kill your plasmas in a few hits.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jun 07, 2011 20:56


When life gives you lemons...

"TAKE YOUR DAMN LEMONS BACK, LIFE. I DON'T WANT YOUR STINKIN' LEMONS."
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TheOwner

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TheOwner

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Now here is where the real skill comes in, you have to be good enough to stop them from popping up and destroying the blocking units. Swarmers often come in, kill the mecha by a walker, and then you can get it down to almost no health. Its rather simple and quite effective. Make sure to watch for any possible attacks similar to it.

I was gonna say 'You been owned' but that makes me sound cocky... so um... ya...
shaithis

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shaithis

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  lantry wrote: moving heavy units onto them only does one damage; not nearly enough to kill them. I don't know the exact circumstances but I would suggest just avoiding them as much as possible, without letting them get a base or knock out artillery. If your opponent is spending so much on spamming underlings, you should be able to get the upper hand in the real fight aboveground. Spamming underlings isn't (IMO) a good strategy, the best way to use them is to send just a few to screw with your opponents heads XD


What is this crap??? Doing 1 damage to underlings is huge! If they move after the first squish, you can step on them again to bring them to 80% power. If they keep moving, you keep squishing (does not work on mountains obviously, and careful moving that expensive eclipse into forest). On some maps, underlings literally have to nap under a heavy unit to at least stay on the same health, otherwise they will be so weakened that you can basically count them out of your opponent's strategy.

Some advice for newbies - create an Excel spreadsheet, and "trick" it into creating a hex grid by placing x's into every other cell horizontally, then doing the next row and starting with a space. The result will look something like this:

_x x x x
x x x x x
_x x x x

Look familiar? Now, substitute x's with underling counts, esp. incl. 0, and highlight the 6 locations around a 0 cell green. This makes it a cinch to pinpoint locations and squish them every turn.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jun 27, 2011 11:53

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waxoid

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waxoid

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Interesting. In a typical Khral siege of Titans, Khral clearly can afford many more underlings than you can ground heavy units, and in the crush of ants he can move them around so you don't know which one you were squishing. Any one you're not stomping can heal. In practice it does seem like you are mainly stomping to hopefully keep a decent number of ants at 9 rather than 10. What am I missing?

I like the spreadsheet idea, and had been thinking I need to start developing some automated tools to streamline reading the ant sign. I can think of some macros to do more, but to achieve the basics of what you describe, you can use some conditional formatting:

Select C2, then hit command-A (select all cells, with C2 the active cell). then enter conditional formatting (classic, based on formula) with these two conditions:

=(MOD(ROW(),2)= MOD(COLUMN(),2))
(set formatting of fill=grey, and this will give the checkerboard pattern.)

=OR(AND(A2=0,NOT( ISBLANK(A2))),AND(B1=0,NOT(ISB LANK(B1))),AND(D1=0,NOT(ISBLAN K(D1))),AND(E2=0,NOT(ISBLANK(E 2))),AND(D3=0,NOT(ISBLANK(D3)) ),AND(B3=0,NOT(ISBLANK(B3))))
(set formatting of fill=green, and this will highlight cells green where a '0' has been entered in a neighbor.)

This alone doesn't really make it a cinch to always locate underlings, but it's a good start.
finman

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finman

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it seems I can't see underlyings if my unit is on my base - there is no yellow number

I lost a walker and assimilator that way. is this a bug?

the map is funislands
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waxoid

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waxoid

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It would be a bug – units on bases show ant sign as well as units not on bases. I've never seen a bug like this. What I have seen though is confusing ant sign, that caused me to believe the indicator was broken for some unit. However 100% of the time it turned out I had just made a mistake somewhere in my minesweeper deductions. So we would have to see screenshots before (showing no sign) and after (showing ant having popped from a neighboring space). Be sure to watch the replay and make sure ants popped vs. hopped in from somewhere as well.
amidama

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amidama

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underlings are quite useless when burried, because oponent with a score 1700+ will see exactly where each of them are, by using the turn redo. here is more info:
http://forum.uniwar.com/posts/list/2176.page

Hakumen
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Apercent

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Apercent

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Back in the day, I think they had around a +6 bonusthat was recently debugged, hence the problems with underlings in 2010. I could be wrong

And, as a great player once said. You must always assume your opponents can see your underling. I don't even use redo, and I see them all the time.

They are very useful is you set them up right, but ONLY if you set them up right. A gang up bonus can give you +6 bonus.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Jan 03, 2016 07:04

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